Darkest Waters

An ancient and implacable evil turns its attention upward.

Cuts9

Cuts warned his friends they should rest, and not search through the enemies belongings till after. They ignored him. He warned they should not go into the tunnels, and then relented to traveling for an hour. He wanted to find Jalenna, but traveling blindly underground was not the way to do it. Days later the group emerged. They headed Tilburne.

In Tilburne, Cuts left his friends to talk to Wilvrith the smith. They talked about the bridge Cuts liked working on. Cuts had been thinking of hiring some mercenaries to help him pursue Jalenna’s kidnappers. So they talked a bit about that as well. After a couple hours, Cuts met up with his friends again.

The group headed down the river to Samurth. There they came upon many injured mariners. Their barge had been attacked by some giants it seemed. Cuts began talking to several people determining what should be done. It seemed his friends and him would be going after the attackers. First they had to go see Rathlaris though.

Cuts made it to Rathlaris. As always everyone had something that they needed to find out from their only wizardly friend. They also had lots of trading to do. Everything they had acquired seemed like it would be very nice to sell. So he pushed for that.

A long time ago Cuts had lead many warforged in battles. Warforged who led platoons or larger groups were all equipped with command modules which allowed them to communicate orders telepathically to many others at one time. Cuts’ module had not be used in hundreds of years. He now had a utility for it, and the awareness to desire it. He requested that Rathlaris see if it could be repaired.

Rathlaris agreed and lead Cuts up to another room to fix the command module. Cuts was not prepared for the reality shattering time manipulation that Rathlaris utilized. The room Cuts was lead to converted a few minutes in the room below into hours of time. After the repair was complete, Cuts was able to communicate telepathically once again. He had expected this would surprise his friends, but soon lost the notion as it became apparent to him that Rathlaris was manipulating time.

Cuts had problems wrapping his mind around what how Rathlaris was doing it. He also began to review Rathlaris’ condition changes over the last few visits, and how they changed so drastically each time he had left and returned to the main room. The group gave Rathlaris Jalenna’s ring, and when Rathlaris returned he had modified it to help them locate her. Cuts would have been excited, for a warforged. However, he could only think about how much time Rathlaris might have spent working on it. Everything that Cuts had known about arcana seemed so little suddenly.

This kind of contemplation and awareness were huge for a warforged to experience. It was still impossible for Cuts to ever guess anything more about his own history. However, the realm of possibilities was wide open. In only a while later, Cuts was listening to Rathlaris explain how a model of a small hut functioned. This model hut existed in another plane. The model could bridge the gap between planes, and allow them to enter the hut. Cuts had to find a way to harness some of this kind of power. After talking to Rathlaris for some time he learned about other figurines that could summon magnificent creatures.

Ezio and Cuts both purchased jade sea snake figurines. Cuts got one carved from green jade while Ezio had one of white jade.

It seemed that things were changing quickly for Cuts. Nithaulk informed him that there was a mercenary group who was going to track down a giant who was suspected of perpetrating the attack on the river barge. Cuts declared the should allow the mercenaries to take care of the situation, but then Nithaulk mentioned concerns for the giant possibly being wrongfully accused. Cuts asked Nithaulk to decide how to proceed. Cuts’ head was still spinning with all the things that were happening so he felt that Nithaulk would be able to make a clearer decision.

Nithaulk relayed to Cuts that they would tell the mercenaries to go ahead without them. The friends needed to go to see Lord Farthane about taking ownership of Spireholm. Nithaulk and Ezio had expressed the idea that it would be in Lord Farthane’s interest to have them occupy the keep since he did not have enough men to protect the keep and the towns. The group was agreed, and traveled back into Samurth after finishing their dealings with Rathlaris.

Cuts wanted to recruit another person to their group. While Nithaulk went to explain to the mercenaries what the group decided, Cuts found a former mariner named Klorch who was looking for work. Cuts paid him 520 gold pieces and agreed to pay him 3 silver per day for his services. Klorch with them, the group headed to Lord Farthane. As soon as they arrived the group determined that they were farther away from Jalenna than Samurth was.

Lord Farthane filled Cuts with pride as he was proclaimed a Knight’s Bachelor. Ownership of Spireholm was granted on the condition they did not collect rent for it.

Cuts world was spinning, but he was happy. Every moment he spent contemplating some aspect of the past few months. He was concerned for his friends, they did not seem to act how they did when they crossed the vast together. He wondered about employing Randen, Jalenna’s boyfriend who expressed a desire to join them. He worried that the boy might set off alone soon if there wasn’t another way to help Jalenna. Cuts couldn’t recall his former life. He was still as compassionate as before his soul rested in metal though. Yet it had been a surprise to him that Jalenna was still alive. Cuts had given up on finding her, and settled searching for justice. Now that he knew she was alive his fervor was renewed.